Haiku contest: Summarize your Facebook feed

Let’s have a haiku contest. Can you summarize your Facebook feed in a haiku (bonus points for restricting to 5-7-5).

Having been part of a university community for many years, here are some examples of what Facebook shows me:

I’ll go further – If you hate our country so much that you think this inexperienced ill-equipped racist asshole [Donald Trump] should be put in charge of our government, our military, our domestic policy and foreign relationships then you should think about moving out because you are anti everything this country stands for and you dont [sic] belong here. And we will not miss you.

I call on all Bernie supporters to rally behind Hillary Clinton. The danger that Trump and the republikans represent to us all are unthinkable. They will set our country back 50 years, undo all social progress and destroy our economy and global standing- or worse. We must unite to defeat them. Bernie is a true progressive – a mensch – and will be an important ally in the Senate. You know he will be supporting Hillary – and we all need to do the same.

Goodbye Rubio and good riddance. You were extreme and dangerous but in this crazy year not extreme or dangerous enough for the haters of your party.

Mitt Romney just told the truth about Trump…and then many lies about Hillary Clinton. Thanks for reminding us how much worse off we’d have been if we’d elected this pompous elitist empty suit – and the danger of ever electing the super-rich and over-entitled.

Heres [sic] our next “First Lady”, wielding a handgun. Imagine the outcry if Michelle Obama posed like this – but only silence from the right. Share this around. And stop it from happening. [over a photo of a lightly dressed young Melania Trump]

When I was young and learning about the Holocaust I wondered how someone like Hitler could come to power in a country that had smart talented resourceful people, and whether I would have had the courage to resist the rise of nazism and fascism. We are nearing that kind of challenge and that need to fight to protect our Nation and it’s values from thugs and haters – domestic terrorists – who seem bent on destroying it. We cannot let them succeed.

Another example of the efforts by Republicans to limit the voting rights of minorities. Sad and infuriating. [over an article on voter requirements; the (white) author feels comfortable assuming and asserting that American minorities are inferior to white Americans in their ability to comply with annoying bureaucracy]

If Trump becomes President, Trudeau is giving me another reason to move to Canada. [not sure that the author of this one would qualify as he is around 65 and, like most countries with publicly funded medical care, Canada disfavors older immigrants with a point system: “Persons … lose two points for each year that they are under twenty-one or over forty-nine.”]

Throw the key away on [Dennis Hastert]. Harsh, but it makes me real angry. [i.e., the author has the courage to denounce someone who is both an admitted child molester and an admitted Republican]

I usually agree with Krugman, and today is no change from that stance.

A ticked off young woman speaking truth to power: [over an article in which a Starbucks customer called Florida Governor Rick Scott an asshole and noted “You cut Medicaid, so I couldn’t get Obamacare,” (but she still has enough money to patronize Starbucks?)]

These mouths remind me of a politician we all know and denigrate! [over an article titled “Monkeys With Smaller Testicles Scream Louder to Compensate, Study Finds”; what would happen if one of his friends compared Barack Obama to a monkey?]

Let me repeat: this man is a fascist. It he is President, he’ll create and endorse storm troopers outfitted with Trump ties.

Here’s my haiku summary of the above:

I hate Donald Trump Liberals are my besties Important to share

Readers: What’s your haiku summary of your Facebook feed?

[Separate question: Why is there so much political content on Facebook? The above folks suggest that they don’t want to live in the same country as anyone who identifies as a Republican. It should therefore be safe to assume that they have long since defriended anyone whom they suspect of supporting Trump, Cruz, et al. Thus their postings can’t reach beyond fellow Democrats and therefore they are spending a lot of time preaching to the converted, right? Why would they do this? Do they achieve higher social status among Hillary supporters for the vehemence and creativity of their denunciations of Donald Trump and traditional Republicans?]

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24 thoughts on “Haiku contest: Summarize your Facebook feed”

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I have lots of Facebook friends of all political stripes. The key to not being unfriended by liberals (non-liberals don’t treat politics religiously so they don’t unfriend people who disagree) is, on the occasions when their criticisms of conservatives are completely 100% right (unusual but you’ll see at least one almost every day), to share those posts so they don’t think you’re an enemy. They are usually too childish ever to criticize their own side, so it’s effective camouflage to say something negative about a conservative amidst your criticism of liberals because then they will assume you’re genuinely independent.

(I actually am independent, but I admit to disliking Republicans less than I dislike Democrats. And as a New Yorker who has been following Trump for 40 years, I do not find him at all terrifying, he is a known quantity who has had exactly the same personality all along.)

I had one liberal friend who unfriended me on Facebook because I posted a very seriously negative story about Ted Cruz that he told me about. The reason? Because he felt insulted that I said to him “let me check this out” and only posted it after checking–that I wouldn’t take his word for it that Ted Cruz was evil incarnate meant that I was evil too.

Politics is the religion of the many liberals that I come into contact with at my workplace. I dislike listening to the rantings of self righteous religious zealots no matter what religion they espouse. I have no facebook friends.

The reaction to Trump’s nomination that I’ve seen on social media is basically unfiltered horror. Ezra Klein: “Trump’s other gift — the one that gets less attention but is perhaps more important — is his complete lack of shame. It’s easy to underestimate how important shame is in American politics. But shame is our most powerful restraint on politicians who would find success through demagoguery. Most people feel shame when they’re exposed as liars, when they’re seen as uninformed, when their behavior is thought cruel, when respected figures in their party condemn their actions, when experts dismiss their proposals, when they are mocked and booed and protested. Trump doesn’t.”

The Washington Post, basically describing this cartoon: “A horseshoe falls off the doorframe. A wolf howls mournfully in the distance.”

Also interesting to me has been a number of die-hard conservatives saying that they won’t vote for Trump, or will even vote for Hillary Clinton (!), as she’s the only one who can stop Trump now.

The philosopher Richard Rorty predicted the rise of someone like Trump (“a Weimar-like period”) back in 1997. Quoted by Mark Danner:

members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots….

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion…. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.